Ricochet (Renegades #3)(71)
Author: Skye Jordan

Ryker felt her pulling away while he’d still been holding her against his body. While the pulse in her neck still raced beneath his fingers. Now, as he climbed behind the wheel of the truck and Rachel clicked her seat belt waaaaay over on the passenger’s side, he felt all the old problems slide back into the space between them like an iron wedge.

He turned the engine over and glanced at her. She met his gaze and smiled. It was the distant, polite smile of an acquaintance, not the warm, satisfied, or even naughty smile of a lover. But then, they weren’t really lovers. They were fuck buddies. That had been made clear from the beginning. All Ryker could ever envision wanting at that time. And despite the massive conflict the thought of anything more caused in his life…he still wanted more.

But only with Rachel.

This wasn’t about wanting someone waiting at home for him. It was about wanting Rachel. And that just fucked up everything.

He patted the bench seat between them. “Come sit with me.”

A spark of resistance hinted in her eyes, but she released her belt and slid to the middle, then refastened. Ryker had the strangest desire to wrap his arms around her and bury his face in her hair. To kiss her and tell her how awesome their sex had been for him. But he was pretty sure she’d put up a wall again. So he just smiled, squeezed her knee, and directed the truck back out onto the main highway.

He waited five full minutes before he spoke. Watching the digital clock tick off the minutes on the dash was torturous, but when she still hadn’t spoken, hadn’t touched him, hadn’t laid her head on his shoulder, he couldn’t take it any longer.

“Why so quiet?”

She licked her lips, kept her gaze out the windshield, and shook her head. “Just thinking about all I have to do when we get back.”

“Can I help? I bet I can file as well as Kelly and Katie. And I won’t bring down the computers by overloading them with Internet searches for fashion or new nail polish colors.”

That got her to laugh and cut some of the tension in the cab. “No, thanks. The system probably just has to be rebooted, and everything I need to do is bookkeeping.” She drew a breath, and the muscles in her neck strained. “So…when do you leave?”

His stomach dropped. “I, uh, need to be at Joint Base Lewis-McChord outside Tacoma on the twenty-third.”

She glanced at him. “What about Afghanistan?”

“I fly to Kandahar from Lewis-McChord with another unit headed over.”

“Oh.” The flicker of hope he thought he’d seen snuffed out and she nodded. Exhaling, she pressed her palms together and pushed them between her knees. “Bet your guys will be happy to have you back.”

Ryker forced a smile. Nodded. And they fell into silence again.

After another three minutes—he couldn’t wait the whole five this time—he asked, “What’s bothering you, Rach?”

She pressed her lips together and lowered her gaze to her lap. Then cleared her throat. “I just want us to be on the same page.” She glanced at him, then away, and he knew what was coming. “You know I love being with you, but we can’t do that here. And I can’t take the time or the risk of going off site like that again.”

Even knowing didn’t cushion the blow. He gritted his teeth to hold his temper. “Listen, I was thinking about this. I’ll just talk to Troy, set him straight about the way it is. And I’ll make it right with Marx. I just need to have a sit down with them—”

“No. Please, Nathan, don’t.” Her terse response made his temper bristle, but she took a slow breath and softened her voice. “Let me try to explain this in terms you can relate to. Would you ever fuck a woman on your team?”

“We don’t have—”

“Then your unit? Your platoon or battalion or whatever the hell you call those things? You know what I’m asking. And you know you wouldn’t, because it would be unprofessional. It would cause problems with your boss or CO or whatever, and maybe cause conflict with your buddies, and maybe piss off the guys on your team. It’s the same for me here.”

“I’m not a Renegade. We don’t work together in the same way—”

“You’re close enough, and you know it,” she said, that determined streak clear in her voice. “You know talking to Troy and Josh won’t change their minds. You know it won’t make anything better. And I know, after you’re gone, the fact that I messed around with you would still be a rift between them and me.

“You and I don’t have that much time left together anyway. It’s been good. We’ve been lucky so far. Let’s just quit while we’re ahead. While we can both look back on this and smile.”

Nathan wasn’t smiling. Nor did he feel like smiling.

He turned onto the ranch, and gravel crunched under the tires. The compound was quiet, and lights burned in the bunkhouses and the dining room.

Her phone rang, and she pulled it from the pocket of her shorts. Swearing under her breath, she silenced the call and put the phone away.

“What’s with that?” he asked, unable to keep the belligerence out of his tone. “Why are you avoiding your sister?”

“I already told you we don’t get along.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

He lifted his hand and let it slap against the steering wheel. “I can spill my guts to you about my buddy getting blown up, but you can’t even tell me why you hate your sister. Nice.”

“Fine,” she said as he pulled the truck to a stop in the lot. “You want to know about my sister? She’s gorgeous. She’s got a killer body. I might have been born first, but she was in line for the flash in our family. And she was fucking my ex behind my back. They are now together, visiting my parents, and want me to make nice and pretend it’s all okay.”

All Ryker’s anger drained, replaced by guilt he’d brought up a subject that caused that kind of pain on her face. “I’m…sorry.”

“My sister has always gone out and gotten what she wanted, despite the consequences to anyone else. She wanted Dante, so she got Dante—to hell with my feelings or how it would hurt our family. She wanted a private college, she got private college—to hell with the second mortgage my parents had to take out on the house to pay for it. She wanted a job in New York, she takes a job in New York—to hell with the fact that it will break my mother’s heart.